カカクコム社長 田中実の忘我録

1st half of the fiscal year 2010

We disclosed the captioned performance today.  In conslolidated basis, sales volume, operating profit and current profit were JPY5.937billion, JPY2.258billion and JPY2.263billion respectively, which is better than our projection revised upwardly in August.  Following these figures, we also updated our anual projection upwardly as JPY12.9billion for sales volume, JPY5.2billion for operating and current profit.

Moreover, the most recent traffic (October's number) that was also disclosed today was better than we expected and even in November we are being able to feel the same and very strong momentum. Under the current Japan's economy, our service seems more valuable from the viewpoint of consumers.

Thus, even second half, we are determined to reach out for best performance ever as you are looking forward to.

Regards,

Minoru Tanaka, president

kakaku.com, Inc.

UU & PV of Sep.2009

As having been disclosed, our websites' traffice (UU and PV) in cosolidated basis of the captioned term was the highest ever.  PV surpassed 1 billion and UU exceeded 42million which both were growing faster than we had expected at the biginning of  this fiscal year.

As for this 3rd quarter, that contains the highest shopping season like X'mas and winter bonus, etc.  Riding on these favorable factors, we would like to accelerate our business performance by providing more useful services that Japanese consumers would miss.

Regards,

tabelog.com

Except for the most popular website we are running, kakaku.com itself, we do have another giant website named tabelog.com, restaurants search engine that claims more than 10million unique users in August.

When you look into numbers of users and page views respectively, using alexa.com, tabelog.com seems to have surpassed all the restaurant related web sites in Japan. The thing I want to put an emphasis on is that while second biggest one (UU and PV-wise speaking) is said to be gnavi.co.jp, the biggest difference is human resources both servises are using.

Our site, tabelog.com is operated by 15 people whilst gnavi.co.jp is by more than 1000 people. This is due to our users' contribution, who write more than 40thousand restaurant reviews in monthly basis. Thus we can operate without hiring so many professional writers or correspondents.

In the future we would surely expand this kind of service to other areas such as hospital search, hair salon seach and so on,,,,

Please keep your eyes on our business perfomances from now on.

Regards,

traffic data for May,2009

The captioned data was released today as per attached. The result (36million unique users in all) was better than I personally expected and strongly wish that this trend could last for good.  Especially, growth rate of tabelog.com was superb and indelibly etched in my mind whilst all the other web-sites we are running are doing good.

(I really apologize that English version of the data is not available yet, though that one would be from the next month.)

Very best regards,

fiscal year end

There are only several hours left before we see the end of fiscal year 2009/3.  I think we, kakaku.com,Inc. could establish fortress of sales and profit, not depending on kakaku.com only but also based on other websites like 4travel.jp, tabelog.com(coined word of taberu or eat in Japanese and blog)  etc. this year,  and belive that such movement would accelerate next year.

But as I always mention every time I see foreign investors, our standpoint is very clear and would never change. That is pro-consumer, or pro-internet users, standing by consumers / our users whatever new services we release.

Looking forward to talking to you-all about our result very soon,

3rd quarter result of kakaku.com,Inc.

Yesterday, we disclosed the captioned financial report and now the English version summary is available. Overall, the result was very good, mainly due to augmented traffic both unique user-wise and pageview-wise speaking.  And more favorably, this trend is still continuing as January's  number of UU of kakaku.com was approximately 18million, or 5% more than December's one that itself was the highest ever.  Also other services like tabelog (BBS website for restaurant) and eiga.com(information and BBS website for movies) though not consolidated yet are recording higher-than-ever performances.

Looking forward to talking to you-all very soon.

2nd quarter of fiscal year 2009

A couple of days ago, we disclosed financial data for the captioned term.  From April 1st to September 30th, sales volume and current profit in consolidated basis were approximately 4.35billion JPY and 1.66billion JPY respectively, both of which were the highest number as 6 months' figures.

Main reasons why we have performed well are because under severe stagflation (today, I think that is shifting to deflation), Japanese consumers are more price-conscious and eager to buy highest-value goods under limited budget. We do have all the data like price information, reputation and word-of-mouth both provided by consumers, specification etc. for consumers to decide what to buy, when to buy, where to buy...

kakaku.com, Inc. would ride on this favorable wave and never stop releasing state-of-the-art services.

Traffic of this August of kakaku.com

Usually, traffic of kakaku.com for which I mean numbers of unique users and pageviews, would be 4 or 5 % less than ones of July due to summer season when consumers go out for vacation. Especially this year such impact was expected to be stronger because in addition to vacation season, there was Olympic games in Beijing that we thought would shift interest in all the internet traffic to TV.

However, according to bullet report to me yesterday, such impact was much less than our forecast. The kakaku.com's traffic of Augsut was just 1.5% less than one of July. We should scrutinize what was going on now in Japan's internet and its economy, stangnant atomosphere of which might be making Japanese consumers look for lower prices and BBS of each product item through kakaku.com before they actually purchase anything. At any rate, not a bad news. For more details, be kindly requested to wait a bit.

Sincerely,

1st quarter of fiscal year 2009

The captioned quarter already ended on June 30 and today we released its financial performance after our auditor endorsed its authenticity, as per attached. Major figures, sales volume, current profit, net profit after tax were 2.17billion JPY,  835MM JPY, and 478MM JPY respectively, which I feel were better than expected.

Main reason why we could accomplished these figures was our well-performing websites' traffic that generated more sales from CPC, CPA and advertisement.(*)

As for 2nd quarter and/or rest of this fiscal year, I wish we could be sort of epicenter of Japan's internet industry from the viewpoint of innovation and high-quality contents which I do believe lead to good performance.

Looking forward to hearing from you all very soon,

(*)CPC: cost per click/ CPA:cost per action

Blank hereunder.

Looking back at 1st Quarter

When you need to know real value of internet-media companies like kakaku.com, Inc., one of the best approaches is to check numbers of unique users and page views as you already know (UU and PV hereunder respectively).

We disclosed the most recent data available for June last week as per attached(sorry for Japanese). It was very comfortable level and such numbers are still growing. However, what I noticed and now am paying attention to is that such trend is a bit different from the last 2 or 3 years.

Usually, UU & PV first half of the fiscal year (April to September) would be stagnant because such season includes long national holidays (named "Golden Week") and summer vacation season when consumers would go traveling and/or go to movietheaters. And thereafter, in second half, our traffic(UU & PV) would jump up, grabbing demand and consumption for winter bonus and X'mas.

But this year, our traffic(especially kakaku.com itself) is already breaking the last year's highest record, which I am suspecting is reflecting our country's economy.  This summer, it is said in newspapers that bonus income and consumption would be lower level whilst CPI is rising faster and steeper and consumers tend to be more conscious of information for price and BBS (or reputation by other users) before they purchase anything (especially durable goods).

We are determined to augment our commitment to contribute to such needs by our users and I do believe that would be good impact to higher value of this company.

Result of the fiscal year 2008

Today we announced financial data of the fiscal year 2008.  In consolidated basis, annual sales were 6,941MM JPY whilst operating profit and current profit were 1,915MM JPY and 1,930MM JPY respectively.(with flying colors, frankly speaking)

On the other hand, as for this ongoing fiscal year 2009, our projection that was disclosed simultaneously, is 9,000MM JPY for consolidated sales volume, 2,900MM JPY for operating profit and current profit(before tax), the last two figures of which are both 50% more than the previous year's ones.

The only thing we want to stick  to and we are determined to promise is standing for consumers and our users by providing them with useful information for shopping, traveling, restaurants or whatsoever.  By keeping this, I do believe we can acquire broader and deeper supports from them that are essential for our business.

Looking forward to hearing from you all very soon.

Yours sincerely,

Minoru Tanaka, President 

3rd quarter result of the fiscal year 2008

Kakaku.com,Inc. disclosed 3rd quarter financial data today.  Sales, current profit before tax, and net profit after tax were 1.834billion, 574million, 325million JPY respectively, which are mostly equal to 50% of the second half's projection of ours. Thus, at this moment, I am feeling comfortable about these figures when you take into consideration previous trend that 4th quarter's sales and profit had been the highest during each fiscal year.

When I look back at the 3rd quarter, the biggest contributors for sales were "customer support business" and "advertisement" due to higher-than-ever traffic, both UU-wise and pageview-wise speaking. 

One of the reasons of  this traffic growth is "Shopping search service" that covers almost all the price and commodity data available at biggest shopping website including Yahoo shopping, Rakuten, Amazon JPN, and Bidders that could accelerate frequency for our users to visit kakaku.com.

Aside from kakaku.com itself, tabelog.com that is BBS website for restaurants has shown very sharp increase of UU and PV up to 4.7MM UU and 50MM PV approximately.

We are determined to continue this favorable growth rate and have this carried over to the next fiscal year.

Very best regards,

Minoru Tanaka, President

(English version's IR papers would be available later. Sorry for inconvenience in advance.)

1st half of this fiscal year

Kakaku.com, Inc. could mark good financial record, which is better than the initially disclosed our own projection for sales volume and operating profit by approximately 10% and 40% respectively in consolidated basis.

I feel like attributing these results to increased traffic (meaning number of unique users and page views) and also to revised and augmented services including "CRM base" that is newly developed ad service and other lucrative subsidiaries, like 4travel and kakaku.com financial, Inc. etc.

Looking at the second half of this fiscal year, this trend is continuing and we are looking forward to seeing better results by renewal of our web-site, kakaku.com  and refurbishing search engine functions, both already done and integrating ID services between kakaku.com and other web-sites operated by us, accelerating cross-use of our customers.

At any rate, our policy-customer first would not change for good and I promise that kakaku.com would keep its unique position as number 1 pro-consumer web site.

Minoru Tanaka, president

kakaku.com, Inc.

1st quarter result of FY2008

August 23rd, 2008

To foreign investors

So sorry that English version of the captioned was not available until today.  However, finally you could take a look at it at kakaku.com.

While our projection for the first half of this fiscal year is 2.7 billion JPY for sales volume and 400 million JPY for current profit before tax (both numbers were already released at 15th, May 2007), the result of first 3 months was 1.48 billion JPY and 245 million respectively.  Thus I think I could be allowed to say we are going forward a bit faster than expected.

To augment traffic (unique users & page view) of tabelog.com (restaurants bbs site) and mansion DB (search engine for new apartment), and accelerate newly introduced FX service (kakaku FX), kakaku.com,Inc. is planning to spend sort of expense for their promotion and positive results are already being realized in sales and profit.  For the 2nd quarter, kakaku.com, Inc. is prepared to release more new services useful for our customers and lucrative for the company.

Looking forward to hearing any questionnaires or opinions from you all, maybe at coming one-on-one meetings or other occasions.

Sincerely yours,

Minoru Tanaka, President

M&A of eiga.com

On yesterday's board meeting of kakaku.com, Inc., we agreed to sign a letter of understanding to acquire 70% issued stock of eiga.com (unlisted) that has engaged in movie-related web contents since 1998. (Actual acquirement is planned to be April 1st, 2007)

By subsidizing this company, I do believe kakaku.com, Inc. would make a very important step to penetrate into entertainment business for which we ourselves did not have human or other required expertise that eiga.com has. On the other hand, we are expecting that we can make use of our own assets on Internet community such as blog services or BBS to supplement eiga.com's already-superb contents.

Furthermore, here in Japan, we are now experiencing that Japan-made movies are exceeding overseas-made movies in market size. To cover such users' expanding demand, I think our affluent human and technology resources of web business are very useful and eiga.com agreed on that idea.

At any rate, we have to go through due diligence process before reaching the final agreement that I guess would be around end of March.  Thus, until then, be kindly requested to allow me to think I should confine myself to disclosing information included in the news release (sorry, Japnese only).

However, let me announce this deal surely would augment our already-lucrative business model and such result would be realized even in the next fiscal year.

intangible asset

Recently, I do have several chances to ponder what is the key to sever success from failure in this NET or IT industry.

No doubt that one of them is a sort of technology to support our business.  However, not only tech guys but also all the other human resources are the one and only factor I know I should put the most emphasis on to augment and/or maximize value of this company.

Internet is literally interactive communication conduit and now matter how deeply you would be involved in technology side, there are always permanent questions, what you want to express and communicate using that. Further more, that fact that such conduit is interactive means if you are not surrounded by superb human resources, it would be found sooner and easier than one way communication business like TV or radio, because our users do have much more opportunity to communicate us.

Thus, though it is a kind of intangible asset in accounting-side B/S, the most important resources in our business are and must be human ones and I would etch this thing in my mind indelibly and for good as long as I am engaged here.